Influence of Convective Effect of Solar Winds on the CME Transit Time

Abstract

Based on an empirical model for predicting the transit time of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) proposed by Gopalswamy, 52 CME events which are related to the geomagnetic storms of Dst<−50 nT, and 10 CME events which caused extremely strong geomagnetic storms (Dst<−200 nT) in 1996– 2007 are selected, and combined with the observational data of the interplanetary solar winds that collected by the ACE satellite at 1AU, to analyze the influence of convective effect of ambient solar winds on the prediction of the CME transit time when it arrives at a place of 1 AU. After taking the convective effect of ambient solar winds into account, the standard deviation of predictions is reduced from 16.5 to 11.4hours for the 52 CME events, and the prediction error is less than 15hours for 68% of these events; while the standard deviation of predictions is reduced from 10.6 to 6.5hours for the 10 CME events that caused extremely strong geomagnetic storms, and the prediction error is less than 5hours for 6 of the 10 events. These results show that taking the convective effect of ambient solar winds into account can reduce the standard deviation of the predicted CME transit time, hence the convective effect of solar winds plays an important role for predicting the transit times of CME events.